>overseas sellers simply have a massive advantage in starting new seller accounts on Amazon.
Why would it be any easier for an overseas seller to start a new account after being banned? Amazon blocks related accounts whenever they can track it. Sellers can get around that by having employees or relatives open accounts in their name. This is just as easy or difficult in the US as elsewhere. Regardless, it's something Amazon can't completely fix: they need a way to determine an account is related to a previously banned account. When they do determine that they will quickly ban the new account.
In fairness, mostly in FBA-related forums. I'm a 3P seller so I apologize for that comment as I certainly have a skewed view of what is commonly known.
>This is just as easy or difficult in the US as elsewhere.
Wrong. How much would I have to pay you to borrow your passport to set up a seller account? $100? $1000? $10,000? -- You can get this in rural India / China for $20-$100. (And maybe even less than that, I'm not interested in finding out)
>Amazon blocks related accounts whenever they can track it.
Key phrase: whenever they can track it
>When they do determine that they will quickly ban the new account.
I really don't know what to say other than that this is patently false. Here is one (or 50?) of countless examples:
>How much would I have to pay you to borrow your passport to set up a seller account?
My passport would be useless, because I was banned from Amazon after dozens of frivolous complaints by a competitor, who I'm currently suing. I've discussed that elsewhere.
Having talked to many US sellers who operate multiple accounts, some of them dozens, I stand behind my claim that it's pretty easy for determined sellers to run multiple stealth accounts.
>I really don't know what to say other than that this is patently false. It really appears you do not know what you're talking about.
I've heard from plenty of people who got suspended for opening another account after suspension, without going through all the effort to cloak it. It's clear that Amazon enforces that, if they know about it. When duplicate accounts aren't suspended, it's because Amazon doesn't know, or is unable to prove it enough to justify a suspension.
Of course there's a both a false positive and false negative rate. But the claim that Amazon doesn't care about this is wrong. Just in the last year they started enforcing ID verification on all new signups, in large part to make it more difficult to open multiple accounts.
> Amazon blocks related accounts whenever they can track it.
They really cannot, and that's been the case for 10+ years.
Even in-person verification is more or less easily defeatable.
Alibaba requires on-site check and business license check by an expert, and may throw many more scrutiny and audit on you than Amazon, but even this is to little effect.
Well, at least that's easily fixed: require a local physical presence who can be sued or prosecuted. If I wanted untraceable disguised imports I know where AliExpress is.
>hard to get back in
It's been discussed to death, by overseas sellers simply have a massive advantage in starting new seller accounts on Amazon.